After reading others experiences with creating malted corn whiskey, I decided to step up my game and give it a shot. I will post my progress/questions here. Maybe others will learn along with me from the discussions and guidance that I hope to get from the more experienced.

The mill- purchased a Victoria/corona type hand cranker with plans to motorize . I happen to have a 1/12th hp gear motor that I was gifted years ago that I plan to gear up to around 120ish rpms from 27, hope it will do the job. Plan on using wooden gears (well sort of, search 'izzy swan wood gears' on YouTube. He demonstrates how to use timing belt glued to wooden discs to create gears. Whole different topic, probably hand crank the first batch).

The corn- had just over 1/2 bag of Producers Pride whole corn purchased at Tractor Supply, think it was 8.99usd +tax. Earlier enzyme mashes with this corn had globs of oil floating all over the surface which looked gross and was messy to handle so I bought my next bag from a locally sourced feed supply in hopes of getting less oily corn. Further reading tells me this won't be the case since it is still yellow feed corn but the oil won't harm my end priduct either. (The upside is that the farm supply corn is only 6.50 per 50 lb bag) Besides, siphoning the beer off the grain after fermentation left most of the oil in the fermenter.

Malting- wasn't sure how much space this was going to take so I did 10 lbs as a test. Added a splash of bleach, maybe 1/3 capful, to a 6.5 gallon bucket with some warm water. I only had enough water in there to just cover the corn and by morning, it had soaked up enough that the top was dry. Added enough water to cover the corn and continued to soak.(lesson learned- the corn will soak up quite a bit of water and swell up. Cover with several inches and make sure your bucket has room to accomodate the swollen corn without spilling.) I spread the corn out on damp towels placed on 2 large cookie sheets, then covered with more damp towels. I stirred it around twice a day and added a splash of water as needed to keep it moist. Lesson learned - I did this in my 'man cave' which is a spare upstairs bedroom with a full bath ( so indoors ). The malting corn will put off a grassy haybarn smell that women don't seem to like so plan on doing this outside on the porch or in your shed.I let the sprouts get to around 1.25 to 1.5 inches and spread the whole lot out on a big beach towel under a ceiling fan to dry.

I built two 3" by 18" by 48" wooden racks with 1/4" hardware cloth bottoms and followed pretty much the same procedure with the remainder of the TS corn, a tad over 17 lbs. I soaked in adequate water with a splash of bleach, lined one of my racks with a wet towel, dumped the corn in, covered with a wet towel, then clamped the other rack on top to keep the coons out (working on covered back porch this time). Since it was outside, I used a spray bottle with 2:1 water/3% peroxide. Both maltings seemed to go about the same, took maybe 8 or 9 days.

Now a question- I brough these racks in to dry on my work bench since it has been cloudy and rainy. The same grassy smell was there but if I scoop up a handful and really give it a good nosing, it smells kind of like ammonia. Why might that be? Is it normal?

So there's where I am at this point. May get around to grinding and mashing some this weekend. If all this is too over the top for a noob, I'm sure management will let me know otherwise I will update here and beg for advice because this will be my very first all malt mash!

Sounds like a good process. From all I've read, getting from start to finish without mold or spoilage is the main issue. That said, there's a thread on HD that uses H2O2 in the process to overcome those issues - http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 34&t=55381 . It would also seem that the use of the H2O2 greatly simplifies the process. If ever I try malting, I think this is the process I will use.

Thanks Cack, that is a great thread. That one and the one pint did were my main inspiration.

I did a small scale trial this morning with 2 lbs corn malt, ground to meal and 1 gallon of water. Heated water to 159f and poured over corn in a small water cooler. Temp settled around 148ish. I put the lid on and wrapped in some towels and went for a hike with my wife. 4 hours later I popped the lid off and temp was down around 125. Iodine test started black and went to dark purple, not very promising. Refractometer showed sg of 1.01. *sad face here* I heated it back to 150 and added some liquid enzymes to see if that would move things along.

Sebamyl GL got me to 1.04 on this batch. Did another 2lbs/1 gallon test but added high temp enzymes and malted corn to the water while heating up to 190f. held for 2 hrs, dropped temp to 150f and added Sebstar HTL. Hit 1.06 which is very respectable for me and feed corn. Only other time I hit numbers at or above that range was when I experimented with store bought corn meal. I have another batch going right now to see if i can replicate the outcome.

Hopefully, the flavor of the malted corn will be worth the additional trouble. Not giving up on malting, gonna try sprouting out to two inches and see if that boosts my conversion.

Other batch I did at 4 lbs in 2 gallons of water. Same crack, coarse meal with a lot of flouring I think because of the conversion to starch from the malting process. I added corn to hot water from the tap with the full prescribed dose for the high temp enzyme, heated to 190 and let sit for 2 hours. sat pot in sink and circulated cold water till temp hit around 149. added sebamyl GL and let sit overnight. Hit SG of 1.059. I was hitting 1.06 with cornmeal before and 1.055 with cracked feed corn without malting so malting appears to improve my yield compared to liquid enzymes only. I have another 2 lb/1 gal water batch going this evening. If I hit around 1.06 again I will be a true believer. Also, malting makes grinding by hand much easier. You can really tell the difference, it's almost like grinding up chalk.

coarse meal with starchy flouring

I have a bag of corn from the local supplier that I have started malting. Think i have pics figured out (using my camera instead of my dumbphone which won't show my pc pics on DCIM since the marhallow update, thanks android)and will post some as i go thru the process. This time i will let it go until i have 2 inch sprouts and hope for 1.05 sg. Figure this to take a couple of weeks so don't hold your breath

Don't expect to have any sort of conversion. I studied this for years and when I was attending the university of KY I found the answer in the AG library. There are only a couple varieties from Peru that malt with enough enzymes to actually convert the starch to sugar. If you search the google book you can verify this.That is why I resorted to exo enzymes.

Distill safe. Make good cuts. Enjoy yourself. Give as much as you take. Have fun doing this incredibly hard work. Be a good example. It's your hobby.

Pint, thanks for doing the research on that. I had always read on the forums that malted corn had enough DP to convert itself. Goes to show that you can't always place your faith in forum consensus - just sayin'.

Thanks for the input Pint. The lowered expectations will probably save me from frustration and disappointment in the near future. From my experimentation thus far, the best outcome (without adding liquid enzymes) that I've achieved was 1.025 sg, not so impressive.. This is with corn sprouted to avg of probably 1.25 inches.

Having said that, yields on the malted corn with added liquid enzymes have been consistently higher than I get with unmalted corn. I started another small mash of 2 gallons of water with 4.5 lbs crushed corn malt last night (upped the grain a bit from previous). Added corn to already boiling water (small change in protocol) steeped till I hit 190, added hi temp enzyme and rested overnight. Added sebamy at150 This morning and was at 1.067 after an hour. Hoping it will have bumped another another point or two when I get home and check it this evening. I recall 1.05 to 1.055 being the range I usually landed in with unmalted.

I already have another 20 lbs malting now and will go for 2 inch sprouts to test, just for giggles. If all goes well this will be my 3rd batch in a row with no mold or souring so it appears that the suggestions in Pints and others posts on malting for using a bit of bleach in the soak water and 1% peroxide solution for daily spritzing are effective. I wont go into the blow-by-blow on my tinkering about but will post anything noteworthy.

Doesn't look like I will make it to 2 inches this time. I am out to 1-1.25 inches now and am seeing signs of mold starting to show. It's only on a few non-germinating kernels right now that I have picked out and discarded but I'm gonna play it safe and start drying. This batch took a lot longer (about 2 weeks or so) than the batches I did earlier to get the sprouts this long.

Things that were different:

-Different source of corn. The TS bag was cleaner than this and had fewer dead/funky looking kernels that were the ones that eventually started showing a little mold.-Temp fluctuation. Did this one and previous one outside; last batch, temps dipped into the 40s and as high as 85. Maybe without the cooler temps, I could have gotten to 2" quicker?-Higher volume. I did a full 20 lb batch this time which put me over 2 inches deep in my rack. as the shoots got longer, it was difficult to stir this much corn around on the bottom towel without breaking off the shoots and some of it stuck to the towel.

To continue working towards my single malt corn whiskey, I will continue on using, liquid enzymes on the malted corn; probably cheating a little but I'm thinking it's going to turn out pretty well. For the testing of conversion on more fully modified corn, I will stick with smaller batches, keep them inside in a constant temp, and change out the towels periodically to ensure reaching 2" sprouts before molding. No high hopes, just want to see how much conversion I can get with just the malted corn.